


temperence

by ignitesthestars



Series: a strange kind of redemption [1]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: F/M, Sparring, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-04
Updated: 2017-06-04
Packaged: 2018-11-08 21:12:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11090028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignitesthestars/pseuds/ignitesthestars
Summary: There’s a naked eagerness in Luke that she trusts more than anything else from him since he came back.Did you ever love me, he'd asked her once, and she thinks that she'd never known him.She knows this. The lazy, languid grace as he starts to walk, his stride curving around her in a wide arc. Luke has no need for pretense anymore, the grinning golden boy giving away to something bitter and intense. He’d spent years hiding what he wanted; he doesn’t bother these days.(an au in which Luke lived, at the cost of being tied to Camp Halfblood)





	temperence

He’s fighting some hapless teenager, but Annabeth can still feel his gaze on her, pale fire licking along her skin and threatening to burn.

“I can Charmspeak him to keep his eyes in his skull if you want.”

Annabeth makes a face at her friend. It's supposed to be a grin, but it comes out too sharp and twisted. Piper raises her eyebrows, makes a mouth with her hand and snaps it.

“Go through those drills I was showing you,” she says instead of answering. “You really don’t need me to guide you any more.”

“Uh, yes I do,” Piper says, raising her voice as Annabeth starts walking towards Luke Castellan. “Annabeth! I’m helpless without your guidance! Step away from the homicidal idiot and render unto me assistance!”

A couple of campers look up in alarm at the words _homicidal idiot_ , but most of them are old enough to be familiar with Luke’s reputation, and young enough not to have experienced it first hand. She ignores her friend, who grumbles under her breath and starts going through the motions with her dagger as Annabeth’s feet nudge the edge of the training ring.

He doesn’t stop looking at her, not until the teenager he’s sparring crows with delight, a slice of red blooming on Luke’s upper arm. The pain does something to him, sharpens his focus, pulls him back into the fight; his opponent earns the dubious gift of his full attention. Two sour _clangs_ and a yelp later, and the teenager is shaking out his hand with a grumble, sword in the dirt some six feet away.

“You were going easy the whole time!” The boy’s voice cracks on _time_. Annabeth thinks she’s the only one who notices Luke flinch.

“If I threw you on your ass every time you picked up a weapon, the only thing you’d learn is how to fall.”

If the kid says anything else, neither Luke nor Annabeth are listening. The sun’s high overhead and she’s dressed appropriately and he’s not hiding that he’s noticing. Something settles in her gut, thick and hot and unsteady.

“You should be paying attention to your classes.” Her voice comes out lower than planned. She doesn’t clear her throat.

“I’m giving them the attention they need.” He jerks his head towards the ring. “Care to show them how it’s done?”

She remembers a time when it would have made her giddy to think that Luke considered her on his level. And an even more recent time, when she would have laughed in his face at the suggestion that she let him near her with a weapon. The grey in her hair has long since grown out, but she can still feel the pressure of the sky on her shoulders, the full-bodied screaming of her muscles.

“You’re bleeding.”

“Flesh wound.” He holds his arms out, backing into the centre. “Scared, Chase?”

Annabeth rolls her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest. “I’m not that easy.”

The corner of his mouth lifts. “I know.”

The silence that stretches between them is sharp enough to slice her to pieces. _Don't,_ the clever part of her murmurs, _don't._

She rolls her neck and steps into the ring. 

“This is how you defeat an opponent who has longer reach and superior strength,” she says, addressing the campers. Luke's face right now is more dangerous than his blade (plain Celestial, Backbiter destroyed years ago) so she doesn't give him the grace of more than a few seconds, enough to scan for data and then focus on his body.

There’s a naked eagerness in Luke that she trusts more than anything else from him since he came back. _Did you ever love me_ , he'd asked her once, and she thinks that she'd never known him. 

She knows this. The lazy, languid grace as he starts to walk, his stride curving around her in a wide arc. Luke has no need for pretense anymore, the grinning golden boy giving away to something bitter and intense. He’d spent years hiding what he wanted; he doesn’t bother these days.

Annabeth pivots as he stalks her, mentally cataloguing his movements, waiting for the strike. He’s goading her, but while her pride might have gotten her into the ring, she’s learnt enough about patience that it won’t prompt her to move before she’s ready.

“Nice dagger,” he says. “Not as nice as the one I gave you.”

“I already told you I lost it,” she says, the taste of Tartarus thick in the back of her throat. She hadn’t told him where or how, because he doesn’t get to know that about her. Still, the easy confidence in his limbs suggests that he’s guessed anyway, that this is his idea of a first strike.

He might be right. Annabeth wonders where Percy is, cancels the thought before it can take enough root for some passing god to pluck it. There’s as much heat between her and her best friend as there is tension between her and Luke, and she’s not all that eager to see the explosion that results from that much crackling energy in one place.

With barely a flicker of motion, Luke moves.

He’s fast. She thinks she’s faster, but they’re matched enough that proving it is a challenge. Between one breath and the next he’s in her face, sword angling towards her shoulder. She doesn’t bother to block, ducking under the hit and staying low, swiping at his ribs. 

“The key is to make them work for it,” she says, forcing her voice even. “Your opponent has more weight to haul around, and physics likes your weapon better than theirs. Make them swing--” She leaps back from his next attack, “--and avoid meeting their weapon if you can.”

Oh, but he’s grinning now, a lazy smirk that curls one corner of his mouth and crinkles the scar that hooks over his cheek. “Impressive.”

Small mercies mean her heart doesn’t leap at the recognition anymore. She rolls her eyes, breaking away from him, and now it’s her turn to circle, seeking weakness. He still favours protecting his left side, even though the reason to is long dead. 

“But you don’t win fights just by wearing your opponent down,” he continues. “Sooner or later, you have to go on the offense.”

“That’s called a taunt,” she tells the campers. “Make sure _you_ pick your moment. Don’t let them pick it for you.”

She catches the clench of muscle this time, the split-second before he moves. _Fast_ , she reminds herself, slipping around him, _don’t make contact, just be fast--_

But she can’t resist slapping his blade away with her dagger when he brings it back in for another swipe, a contemptuous strike at the exact right angle to send him reeling off balance. _I guess this is my moment_ , she grimaces, unleashing a flurry of blows designed to keep his sword close to his body, making it harder to manoeuvre. 

It has the downside of bringing them into close proximity. Close enough to feel his hot breath puff over her, jagged from exertion. His tank is soaked from training and the sun, and Annabeth becomes uncomfortably aware of the way sweat trickles between her breasts, the small of her back. Before she can help herself, her eyes are glancing upwards; she traps his hands at an awkward angle between her dagger and its hilt, and forgets to explain what she’s doing in the face of the gold flecks in his eyes.

She breathes hard, plotting force and inertia and possible next moves. The intensity in his face hasn’t faded, only the bitterness. She braces for the snark, the snide remark, his next attempt at getting under her skin.

“Hi,” he says. 

It’s soft.

Annabeth stomps on his foot, kicks him full in the stomach as he reels back. His body crashes to the ground and she digs her heel into his wrist until it spasms, forcing him to release the blade. At that point she probably doesn’t have to straddle him, doesn’t have to lean in close, doesn’t have to set her blade against her throat, but here she is with her thighs around his waist anyway.

His eyes, finally, fail to focus. He stares up at the sky, a winded laugh wheezing from his lungs. Around her the campers murmur, seemingly taken aback by her brutality.

“Yield,” Annabeth says. She doesn’t recognise her own voice, rough and ragged.

“Whatever you say.” That, too, is honest. She resists the urge to haul off and slug him.

They stay like that. Just for a beat, but it’s a beat too long. She can’t quite look away - from the gold, from the scar, from the line of his jaw seeping into her throat, so vulnerable to her dagger. She presses the tip in, walking the line between pain and piercing, watching skin bow nearly to the point of breaking.

His breathing picks up, pupils blowing wide. Hers might as well, but she doesn’t pay attention, doesn’t want to know. And then she’s clambering off him, scooping up his weapon before she backs out of his reach. _Yield_ means nothing when it comes from Luke Castellan, not until he’s completely disarmed.

“Surprise,” she tells the campers, who have all fallen silent by now. “That’s your main weapon.”

She drops the sword at the edge of the ring, makes her way back to Piper who has most certainly not been going through her drills.

“What, exactly, was that supposed to prove?”

“Nothing,” she bites out, accepting the bottle of water her friend hands over. She needs it more than she'd realised. “I don't have a thing to prove when it comes to that man.”

“Uh huh,” Piper says, and between her expression and those ever-changing eyes, she's never looked more like her mother.


End file.
